


move with the movement (touch)

by Damkianna



Category: Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers
Genre: 5 Times, Blood and Injury, Caretaking, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extra Treat, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Post-Canon, Sparring, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27519604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Four times Na'Feel touched Sarah, one way or another, plus the time Sarah finally reached out first.
Relationships: Sarah Cantrell/Na'Feel (B5: Legend of the Rangers)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Fic In A Box





	move with the movement (touch)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janetcarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/gifts).



> Your prompts and thoughts on Sarah and Na'Feel were all so good I couldn't pick (weapons system upgrades! Sarah with Mars feelings! Na'Feel with Narn feelings! Tending wounds! Working together!) so ... here is a whole stack of them combined instead. I hope you like it, and happy FIAB! :D
> 
> Title borrowed from Peter Gabriel.

**one.**

"Okay, so you just—want me to get in?"

"Yes," Na'Feel said, firm, with a nod. "Nothing will explode. Probably."

Sarah gave her a flat look. Na'Feel blinked at her, and almost pulled off the innocence—would have, except for the way her mouth twitched.

"You may or may not recall," Na'Feel said, with studious evenness, "that when we were first assigned to the _Liandra_ , it was—not in the best state of repair."

"You can say that again," Sarah agreed.

"The weapons system is as old as the rest of the ship," Na'Feel said, "and functions in accordance with the principles of the Shu-Nali school of aesthetic thought. It was in dire need of upgrades. Which, now that we've failed to die not once but several times, has suddenly become as apparent to the engineering master as it has always been to me. May he retain this clarity of understanding," she added in a murmur, eyes lowered, head inclined, every appearance of deferent prayer, "until I can extract a new starboard plasma processor from his grasp."

"So say we all," Sarah told her solemnly, and then peered through the hatch and into the weapons control pod. "It looks the same."

"It isn't," Na'Feel assured her. "It'll work the same way. Ripping out the whole system and replacing it would take months, and the ship's designed around this nonsense, tok-swallowing power suck that it is. But the clarity of the display and sensitivity of the feedback processing between you and the _Liandra_ should be much better, and you'll be able to adjust mapping settings without exiting."

Sarah blinked. "Wait, really?" The default mapping had always been a huge pain in her ass—left hand, left bow cannons, right foot, right stern cannons, and she got why they did it that way, that Shu-Nali love for metaphor and figurative correspondence, but sometimes you just wanted to be able to flip things around for a minute and punch in a new direction.

She didn't wait any longer. She took hold of the grab handles to either side of the entry hatch and slung herself down. It wasn't going to blow up. Not with Na'Feel in charge of it. But it would hardly have been Na'Feel's fault if something had maybe started smoking a little, or spit some sparks in Sarah's face.

There was no smoke. There were no sparks. She was caught by the pod's gravity—not null, but spherical, concentric, pulling from above and below at the same time, from all sides, to hold her suspended. The display booted up around her, and that was different already: no longer the old red grid-and-diamonds, but spiraling, pale gold. The telemetry and ocular calibrations were faster; she didn't have to hang there trying not to blink for anywhere near as long.

And then, abruptly, she was—in space.

She swallowed a gasp, because she'd done this a hundred times, a thousand, and she flat-out refused to goggle like a first-year probationary trainee. But Na'Feel hadn't been wrong. The clarity was unbelievable. No flickers, no compression artifacts, and the color depth was ridiculous. They were in orbit over Minbar, that was all; a view Sarah had seen ten thousand times. But every flaw in the original display, the lighting system, seemed to be gone. It didn't feel like she was just grasping after Shu-Nali aesthetic principles anymore: it felt like she _was_ the ship.

The _Liandra_ was moving a little, angled in its orbit. So was Sarah. The body map and feedback system had already locked on; she could feel it. She could still move her arms and legs, her head. But the orientation of her body as a whole, relative to her view of the _Liandra_ 's immediate surroundings, wasn't up to her anymore. It was up to that concentric artificial gravity, to its direct correspondence with the position of the _Liandra_ in space.

"Running preliminary diagnostics now," came Na'Feel's voice from above her, outside the hatch—and that was weird as hell. Under normal circumstances the pod would have sealed after her and they'd be on internal comms. Nobody wanted the weapons operator getting distracted by noises or light from the bridge. But there was nothing Sarah needed to shoot at right now, and as it was she couldn't stop the tug of her mouth over Na'Feel's words issued as if from on high, emanating from what Sarah saw as empty space, brilliant with stars.

And okay, Na'Feel also hadn't been kidding about the feedback sensitivity. Sarah tensed a little without meaning to; she could _feel_ the diagnostics, the _Liandra_ 's systems mapped across the surface of her body. A tingle crossing the skin of each hand, wrist, up to the forearm, as the bow cannon systems assessed themselves, and then her feet.

"Testing comms," Na'Feel reported, and then she paused and said, "Hmm," and Sarah twitched. The first two words had been off comms, from above, just like before; but the hum had come through the pod's own comm system, and with the upgrades in place it was—it was like Na'Feel was standing right behind her, chin over her shoulder, murmuring right into her ear.

Sarah bit down on the inside of her cheek, and focused. "Seems okay from in here," she made herself say.

"What? Oh, yes. Comms are fine," Na'Feel said, and it really was like she was standing right there. "Some of these readings are a bit off, that's all. I'm going to recalibrate." She paused. "It might—tickle."

"Tickle," Sarah repeated, and then she felt it.

Hardly anything, really. It was the increased sensitivity, new gradations of awareness and responsiveness, the _Liandra_ 's systems able to map themselves through the pod environment with incredible precision.

It wasn't that Na'Feel had swept a hand across the blades of Sarah's shoulders, trailed her fingertips down the line of Sarah's spine. Of course it wasn't. Na'Feel wasn't touching her at all.

It just felt like she was, for a second.

"There we go," Na'Feel said, warm, pleased, satisfied; the comms were still on, upgraded systems practically breathing the words against the side of Sarah's throat.

Sarah could tell her to shut it down. To finish her tests or diagnostics or whatever without Sarah actually in here. That the sensitivity needed to be turned back down a little. That Sarah had suddenly remembered she'd been planning to clean her quarters on the _Liandra_ this afternoon, real important stuff—

"Just let me know when you're done," Sarah heard herself say, only a little hoarse, and she couldn't even manage to regret it.

**two.**

Sarah took three of them down. That was a little comfort, at least.

The second one got lucky, and managed to slice her across the forehead. Not deep, but it sent blood sheeting into her eyes, dripping stickily into her eyelashes. That was what gave the third one the chance to stab her for real. She couldn't see the knife coming.

They were pirates, still in the suits they'd used to cross vacuum and board the _Liandra_. That was good and bad at the same time: the suits were an extra layer, made it harder to take them out with blows from a denn'bok. If she'd had a knife, too, it wouldn't have mattered. On the upside, though, she really loved the dull hollow sound it made when she smacked them in the helmet. That part was great.

She kept moving, even with the knife in her. She knew how to do that. You weren't much of an anla'shok if you couldn't get your pain under control, at least for a minute or two.

She twisted around and slammed the third one into the wall of the corridor a little harder than she probably needed to. But she had to make sure this guy wasn't going to get up again in time to finish her off.

He slid down the wall, stunned, and he was the last one. Last one in this corridor, anyway. That was good, she thought, looking down at the hilt of the knife. Damn, that was ugly—the knife itself, not just the wound. The blade was serrated, uneven, meant to really tear; and the hilt was garbage, welded roughly on, twisted and bent.

She blinked, and reached out to steady herself against the wall. Which was stupid, because she'd needed that hand; without it, the denn'bok fell out of the other and clanked to the floor.

But the third pirate had been the last one, in this corridor. So it was okay.

Besides, technically speaking, she now had a knife.

She laughed a little, helpless, dizzy. It hurt so much. She had to laugh, or she might cry.

She was—she was still standing. That was good. She had to get to the other end of the corridor. That was where the comm panel was. She had to let David know what had happened, that the pirates had reached this deck. She had to let David know what had happened, and after she'd done that she could lie down and bleed to death all she wanted.

She took a step. Two. The floor tilted under her, swayed, but she kept her hand on the wall. She knew which way was up, and she wasn't going to let going into shock fool her into thinking otherwise.

Another step. Another. How long was this corridor, anyway? The _Liandra_ was a small ship, but small was relative. Right now, she wished it were smaller.

She'd have to remember to tell David that. He'd get a kick out of anybody thinking for even a second that the _Liandra_ was actually too _big_.

She stumbled further. She had to stop to breathe; it was getting harder, not something she could do while she was trying to walk at the same time. She had to fumble a step, pause and gasp a little, and then brace herself and fumble another step.

She hadn't pulled the knife out. Was that good or bad? She didn't know. She couldn't tell whether she was jogging it too much, whether she was only hurting herself worse. Everything she did hurt, so that wasn't really diagnostic.

She'd get to the comm panel. She'd get to the comm panel and call David, and then she could sit down and pull the knife out, try to find something to press to the wound. But until then, she had to focus. She couldn't waste time with anything that might make it take longer to get to that damned comm panel—

"Sarah. Sarah!"

Sarah blinked. Her forehead was still bleeding. She reached up and wiped at it shakily with the back of one hand—not to clean it off, that wasn't happening, but just to try to stop any more from getting into her eyes.

"Sarah—fen-gargling fishspawn—"

"Na'Feel," Sarah said dazedly.

Because that was who it was. Na'Feel had come around the corner like it was nothing, like walking was easy; she stopped short when she saw Sarah, cursed a little more and slammed the heel of her hand into the comm panel.

"They're down here, too. They got Sarah."

David's tinny voice answered, but Sarah couldn't tell what he was saying. The important part was that Na'Feel had called him, so Sarah didn't have to. She could stop moving, and wasn't that the best news she'd had all day?

She swayed gratefully into the wall, slid down it—Na'Feel saw her go, cursed even more and darted to her, gripped her by the arms and eased her the rest of the way to the floor, controlled instead of strings-cut freefall.

Her hands were so warm.

"You're in shock," Na'Feel bit out, when Sarah informed her of this remarkable fact. "You toe-sucking smelt-brained eel-sister—"

Sarah laughed. Laughed, and then cried out, seamless transition from one noise to another, as Na'Feel drew the knife carefully free and then pressed a palm down hard over the wound.

"Terrible—bedside—manner," she gasped out, when her eyes were done rolling back in her head. "Aren't you going—to pat my cheek—'n tell me I'll—be fine?"

"Why would I do that?" Na'Feel said, sharp. "You got stabbed and you're bleeding all over me. You might very well die, because you're too stupid to run away from three people who were all trying to kill you."

"Not very—comforting—"

"Oh, you want comforting, do you?" Na'Feel said, and reached up with her free hand, the slightly less bloody one, to grip Sarah by the chin. To make Sarah look at her, which was the only reason Sarah became aware that her gaze had been drifting sideways without her intending it. "How's this: don't you dare. You hear me? You aren't done here, Sarah Cantrell. You're not going anywhere."

Sarah swallowed, once and then again. She wanted to say something; she wanted to get that look off Na'Feel's face. But the edges of her vision were going dark and spotty, and the only thing she had time to do before she went under was to think dimly how much she hoped Na'Feel was right.

**three.**

Na'Feel was already in the sparring room when Sarah got there.

Not fighting anyone; just working her way through warm-ups, denn'bok in her hands, face set in concentration as she began to work her way through the sequence faster, and then faster still.

It was strange. Sarah never forgot Na'Feel was anla'shok, not really. But at the same time, it had become so much more common to see her with tools in her hands, electrical burns on her fingers, splatters of coolant on her uniform. Sarah was used to thinking of her as an engineer. Weapons support, sure. But it was something else to be reminded that she'd gone through the exact same stave and hand-to-hand training Sarah had.

She hadn't looked over. But she knew Sarah was there. She had to.

Sarah picked out her own practice denn'bok from the rack, and let it expand with a hiss, a thunk. She swung it once or twice, just loosening her wrists up, and then turned it in a more deliberate pattern, whirled it end-to-end.

"Are you supposed to be here?"

Na'Feel still hadn't looked over. Her voice was even, dry.

"You planning to tell on me to Firell?" Sarah said with a laugh.

That made Na'Feel meet her eyes, at last, in a flat, insultingly skeptical stare.

"Relax, I'm cleared," Sarah admitted, and took a couple quick steps closer, half of an exercise designed for pressing forward against a faltering enemy. "Barely even twinges anymore."

It was even true. Mostly. There was still an ache in her gut where the stab wound had been. But it was the stretchy kind of pain that meant that you were out of the woods, that if you were going to die it was going to be of something else.

Na'Feel hummed, noncommittal, and when Sarah came close enough to strike the end of Na'Feel's denn'bok with her own, Na'Feel made a deliberate, patterned retreat just as quickly, drew away before the strike had landed.

"Oh, come on," Sarah pressed. "I'm fine, I swear. You don't need to go easy on me—"

Na'Feel stopped moving, lowered her denn'bok into rest position and looked at Sarah with steady red eyes. "I wouldn't," she said, almost soft, and then swung out, and Sarah caught the blow on her own denn'bok with a satisfying clang. "If you're being stupid and you reinjure yourself," she added, more pointedly, "that's your fault, not mine."

"Exactly," Sarah said, and then came at her for real.

They were a pretty good match. Na'Feel was taller, smooth and quick; but Sarah was solid, braced herself better and hit a little harder. And they didn't go hard or anything—Na'Feel wasn't taking it easy, but they went back and forth between circling each other, real blows and blocks coming in flurries, to meeting each other in steady rhythms like it was an ordinary partnered exercise.

It wasn't until about twenty minutes in that Na'Feel got Sarah's denn'bok away from her.

It was a good piece of work; Sarah was going to have to get her to do it again, half speed, until Sarah understood exactly what she'd done. In the moment, all she knew was that Na'Feel had trapped her denn'bok, locked them in a close block, and then suddenly the weapon was twisting out of Sarah's hands.

She ducked, and then came up again and decided that as long as her hands were free, she might as well return the favor. Na'Feel swung the end of her denn'bok around, and Sarah ducked it again and then followed it, caught it just as it was slowing to reverse and come back at her, forced it to the mat and used her foot, her stance, to help her lever it out of Na'Feel's hands.

She wanted to tell herself it was only reasonable, the sort of thing any trained anla'shok might do. But her skin was prickling with anticipation, her breath coming quicker than it should have been, because—

Because she knew what was going to happen next.

Sure enough, Na'Feel closed with her, graceful, deliberate. Closed with her and then engaged, hand-to-hand. Her blows were fast, precise, falling with the kind of pressure they were all taught to use when sparring in training: enough to register the hit, to warrant a block, only just short of the power it would take to actually leave a bruise.

Sarah knew she was in trouble when she realized she was almost wishing it would—almost wishing she'd have something to press her fingers into later, to remind herself of every place Na'Feel had touched her, and that was so stupid she almost couldn't believe it. She needed to get a damn grip—

Na'Feel hooked her knee. Sarah's stance was usually good enough that hardly anybody could topple her. But she hadn't quite been ready, this time, and Na'Feel was just tall enough, shifted their combined center of gravity just far enough, that it worked.

Sarah's breath caught in her throat, and then they hit the mat. For a second, the only thing in her head was Na'Feel's weight, Na'Feel's solid warmth, pressing down into her; Na'Feel's knee, thigh, against hers, Na'Feel's hands grappling for a hold.

Shit. She _was_ in trouble.

She bit her lip, forced herself to concentrate—broke the circle of Na'Feel's arms before it could actually close on her, and rolled away, up onto a knee and then her feet.

She could call that enough. Couldn't she? She could say maybe she'd been a little stupid, maybe twenty minutes was pushing it right now. Na'Feel would believe her. Then she could leave, cool off. Get her head on straight, get her skin to stop buzzing.

Na'Feel came to her feet too, and then went still. She stood there and watched Sarah, face unreadable, eyes heavy.

"Best two out of three," Sarah said, and Na'Feel grinned and came at her again.

**four.**

Something had happened to Mars.

Nobody knew what, not yet. Sarah had a damn good guess, obviously—it was the Hand. It had to be.

But communications were down planetwide, nothing in or out. David was trying everything, every back channel he had, every ship he could think of that might be close enough and not already caught up in the aftermath. In the meantime, though, they were stuck with next to nothing. Ten seconds of a video transmission, before it had cut out and gone dark, one of the farther Martian satellite cams: something, some black crawling mass, looking almost like a shadow, an eclipse, except there hadn't been anything to cast it. Except, if you looked closely enough, you could see it writhing as it went, eating the planet whole.

Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was—a veil, a shield. Maybe the Hand had just dragged Mars between dimensions, hidden it, cloaked it in darkness.

There was no way to know. Not yet.

Sarah didn't say anything, not while she was on the bridge. She didn't say anything; she watched the video, silent, as David played it over and over, asking Malcolm and Kit to run analyses, searching for clues. She didn't let the expression on her face change.

And then, when her shift was over, when she was allowed to, she left.

She walked. She didn't go back to her quarters. She didn't know where she was going, didn't have anywhere in mind. Her head was empty, quiet. Full of shadows.

She walked, and when she'd gone far enough that she didn't think anybody else was around, she turned and faced the wall, set her feet and brought her fists up, and she punched.

Once, twice. Three times. Again. Again.

By about the eighth one, her knuckles were split, bloody, aching. She could only sort of feel it. She kept going. It wasn't that she wanted to break her hands. She just didn't know what else to do. She didn't know how else to get this feeling from the inside of her to the outside.

And then, between one blow and the next, someone caught her hand.

Let the punch smack into their palm, to be specific. They were braced for it, and they didn't let Sarah crush their hand against the wall.

Sarah blinked. Her eyes were hot, blurring. She didn't know why.

"Punch me," Na'Feel said, gentle. "It'll hurt less."

Sarah couldn't laugh. She shook her head, gasped in a breath—she wasn't sure why she had to, when she'd stopped breathing properly.

"Punch me," Na'Feel said again, and Sarah shouldn't have done it, but she did.

It did hurt less. Was that better, or worse? Na'Feel wasn't shaking like Sarah, wasn't being torn open somehow from the inside out; she met every punch with a block, steady, and where the pain had been driving Sarah on, there was—there was nothing. She slowed her blows, slowed and then stopped entirely.

She was abruptly aware that she was exhausted. She didn't know what to do next. She screwed her eyes shut, felt the itch of blood drying all over her knuckles, and stood there, useless, helpless, because that was what she was.

"Sarah," Na'Feel said, very low, and then hands closed around Sarah's clenched fists. "There's something Narn children have been taught ever since the first Centauri occupation. No matter what is done to your people, to your world—they can't die, not forever, as long as you remember them. Wars can't be won or lost until they end, and they can't end as long as you keep fighting them."

Sarah swallowed, once and then again. Her throat was tight, aching. "Seriously," she forced through it, "your idea of 'comforting' really needs some work."

Na'Feel laughed. Sarah's eyes were closed, she couldn't see it. But she could hear it, a huff of breath through Na'Feel's nose.

"You wouldn't take comfort if it were handed to you," Na'Feel said. "Truth is better, anyway."

She was still holding onto Sarah's hands. She didn't let go. And Sarah—

Sarah didn't want to pull away.

**and one.**

Na'Feel needed a hand in the engine room. There was no telling how long it might have taken, if it hadn't been for that.

She commed Sarah. It seemed only fair. Sarah wasn't technically engineering support, not the way Na'Feel was weapons support, but at the bare minimum, she did have hands.

The problem turned out to be straightforward. Na'Feel was doing a job in the wrong end of a duct that required four or five tools. There was nowhere she could set them down—the duct was angled downward and then dropped away. She couldn't hold all of them in her hands. And it was going to take about six times as long to finish this if she had to keep climbing back out to switch equipment.

The solution was straightforward, too: Sarah had to climb in there with her to hold them.

It was a tight space, but not that tight. There was room for both of them. And if Na'Feel could tell how hard Sarah's heart was pounding, how eagerly it leapt into her throat every time Na'Feel shifted, she didn't show it.

She was, in fact, scrupulously careful. She didn't lean into Sarah, didn't press her knees against the outsides of Sarah's. She didn't touch Sarah at all. She held herself suspended carefully over where Sarah was lying off to one side of the duct on her back, and every bit of her focus was on the wiring behind the open duct panel, those brilliant red eyes narrowed, her mouth pursed absently.

She didn't so much as let her fingers brush Sarah's, when she took tools out of Sarah's hands or put more in them.

It got to the point where Sarah's breath was snagging helplessly in her throat every time she thought Na'Feel _might_ touch her—and every time it didn't happen, she felt herself wind that much tighter, skin itching with the lack.

And then, abruptly, she thought: what the hell was she doing? What was she waiting for? Why was she waiting at all? She'd been called a lot of things in her life, but _patient_ had never been one of them. Neither had shy, for that matter. She was being ridiculous. As if there were some invisible barrier Na'Feel could cross, but not her. As if Na'Feel were the only one, between the two of them, who could—touch.

Sarah had never been good at this kind of thing. She liked fighting, and always had. Touching people in other ways—she hadn't practiced that until she was drunk with exhaustion, hadn't drilled herself in it until it was muscle memory. It was harder, unfamiliar.

But she'd never been willing to admit she was scared before, and she wasn't about to start now.

She cleared her throat, and shifted her weight. Inched sideways, until her knee touched the side of Na'Feel's shin.

And for all that two seconds ago Sarah would've said Na'Feel had forgotten she was anything but a toolbox, Na'Feel felt it. Sarah could tell, because Na'Feel tensed just a little and looked down at her immediately, blinking.

"Na'Feel," Sarah said, and then she was—she moved, reached up with her hands full of tools, hooked her arm around Na'Feel's shoulders. Pulled her down, and kissed her.

It was quick, hard. Slapping a truth down into Na'Feel's palm, and waiting to see what she'd think of it.

When it was over, Na'Feel blinked down at her again. "Well," she said. "You have terrible timing."

Sarah couldn't help it; she laughed.

"I mean it," Na'Feel said, stern. "I'm almost done."

"All my apologies," Sarah said. She couldn't stop smiling. "Back to work."

Na'Feel sighed through her nose. "You're very difficult."

"Yep," Sarah agreed.

Na'Feel eyed her, and then tilted her head. "Luckily for you," she added in a murmur, "I don't mind difficult," and she twisted halfway around—tossed everything she had in her hands so it scattered through the engine room behind them with a loud clatter, and then took Sarah's face in her hands and kissed Sarah again.


End file.
